Tag: Trump

Hiya Regina! It’s-11 with a -16 windchill. It’s supposed to get to -5 this afternoon and sliiide down -8 tonight. The sun came up at 8:41 and it sets at 5:42. Slowly closing in on that 6:00 threshhold! So we lost Mary Tyler Moore yesterday. She was a big deal. You can read more here, here, here, here, here and here. I was a kid when her show was on the air and it was good for my child-brain to have TV that depicted smart, independent women. Wikipedia has a page on her production company, which put out a lot of great shows including one of my all-time favourites, WKRP In Cincinnati. Rest in peace, hero.

1. SAVE CANADIAN MEDIA! A government report recommends lots of things, including a $100 million Journalism and Democracy fund. A.) Yeah, you think? You think maybe there’s no democracy without professional media to keep the public informed? B.) Sounds like groundwork for a slush fund to billionaires who can’t run newspapers, as opposed to funding for journalists and, ahem, SMALL MEDIA OUTLETS THAT HAVE NO STAFF AND WOULD LOVE TO HIRE SOME OF THEIR UNDERPAID FREELANCERS.

5. LIBERAL FRAUDSTER SENTENCED TO PRISON Jacques Corriveau pocketed $7 million in kickbacks from the sponsorship scandal. He’s been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Aww but it’s not fair, he’s ollld, give him a break. Related note: how many of you would trade 10 years in minimum security prison for a million bucks? Thought so.

7. YES HE CAM! Probably my favourite player on the Columbus Blue Jackets has been added to the NHL All-Star Game, hooray wait you don’t care

And here’s today’s Trump Dump:

T1. AMERICAN CITIES ARE MAAAD Trump threatened them with funding cuts, now they’re pissed. Trump may learn that enemies are a lot of work. Wonder how much of the U.S. GDP is going to go to lawyers under these Republicans? One half of the country is going to be suing each other while the other half is going to be rioting. What a waste of human time, effort and potential.

T3. ONE REPUBLICAN STUDENT ORGANIZATION IMPLICITLY THREATENS PROTESTERS WITH VIOLENCE “If you keep prodding the right you may be unpleasantly surprised what the outcome will be,” say dipshits on the College Republicans at the University of Washington Facebook page. This nonsense after a protester was shot at their idiot event with gay white supremicist (!!!) Milo Yannipoulos. Seems to me universities should disband groups that make threats and get people shot, but America! Fuck yeah! I guess.

T4. CHELSEA MANNING IS A “TRAITOR”Whatever, anyone Trump doesn’t like is going to be a traitor.

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Good morning afternoon Regina! Sunrise was 8:42, sunset is 5:40 and we’re looking at -9 today going down to -14 tonight. It’s -10 with a -16 windchill right now. More here. Seventy years ago today, famous gangster Al Capone died after being weakened by a stroke, pneumonia and a heart attack. Ol’ Scarface was messed up from syphilis, too. Capone was 48 but now he’s just dead, dead, dead. You, on the other hand, are alive. Hooray!

1. ANOTHER HOT ONE The numbers are in and 2016 was, unsurprisingly, the hottest year on record. This is the third year in a row we’ve set a planetary temperature record. This is not normal. Too bad everyone who’s trying to raise the alarm and save civilization has to waste energy fighting Trump on everything now, I guess.

T8. IN A CLUTCH, CALL THE DUTCH That Netherlands steps up to save women from Trump’s cuts to women’s health funding.

T9. IMPEACH THE MOTHERFUCKER ALREADY ITMFA T-shirts, buttons and hats are now available! Proceeds go to Planned Parenthood and other organizations in the Trump resistance.

HOW TO WIN AN ARGUMENT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE WRONG Do you reject the scientific consensus on climate change but you’re not sure how to argue with people who know more than you? Relax, and let Monty Python show you how a series of contradictions can derail discussion and make people stop saying things you don’t like! Perfect for oil stooge politicians, dipshit rednecks and talk radio jerks.

Good day, Regina! it’s -7 right now (5:00) and it’ll get down to -9 tonight. The sun arose, so I am told, at 8:45 and will plop at 5:37. On this day in history the first Frisbees went on sale. I’ve always thought Wham-O toys (best name ever) bought the plans from the U.S. military, which developed the basic concept at its Roswell base and sold it, like other patents based on alien tech, to raise funds for its off-the-books expedition to the hollow earth’s interior. What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments.

2. TRUMP DID NOT “DELETE” CLIMATE CHANGE AND LGBTQ RIGHTS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE PAGE It’s just a new page. The old page went here. That’s how it works. Come on guys, we’re supposed to be Team Fact. I mean, Trump’s obviously still a homophobic ass hair and climate science nitwit. (See? See how I stuck to facts there?)

Anyways, here’s a good New York Times‘ story with a misleading headline.

3. I GUESS THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP IS DEAD But this might not be a bad thing. Investors’ rights clauses have made many a trade deal sketchy.

8. I HOPE ANNA MINARD IS OKAY She seems depressed for some reason. You should read this issue’s American Underpants.

9. NOW WHAT? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leads a cabinet retreat to figure out how to handle President Fucko.

10. ALBERTA FARMERS DON’T LIKE CARBON TAXES File this one under “boo hoo”. Hearing farmers parrot oil industry propaganda (“wealth redistribution”, “tax grab”, “won’t help anything anyway”) while ignorantly dismissing the reality of climate change would test any reasonable person’s patience. I would think farmers would prefer a carbon tax to a hard cap on emissions, which could have them scrambling and spending a fortune to get into compliance. Carbon taxes are a market-based response to climate change, not a wealth redistribution scheme. If people want to whine, they should complain we didn’t start to address this 30 years ago. Jerks.

12. BEST OF FOOD AND DRINK VS. 2017 We’re working on our draft category list for this year’s pool which goes live in a week! Got a suggestion? Put it in the comments! Here’s last year’s Best Of Food for reference.

Happy Thursday Regina, how are you? Despite all the war, corruption, suffering and Tumpery going on in the world, the sun still came up today, at 8:54, and it’ll hang around until 5:20. As you might have noticed, it’s not the hottest. As of noon it was -29 and there’s an extreme cold weather warning in effect. It’s supposed to limp up to -27 before dropping to -32 tonight. It will get warmer soon but in the meantime, the -42 windchill means your exposed skin is just a 10-minute drive from Frostbite City. Be careful out there!

1. TAXES GOIN’ UP The City of Regina’s draft budget calls for a 4.18% tax hike, which will probably be watered down before it’s passed, he wrote cynically. Too bad — taxes should be at a level to keep services sustainable, so if this increase is what the city needs, I hope it will go through as is. And yeah, sure, it”ll hit rental property owners. That’s fine; they made their fortunes over more than a decade of boom-time rent hikes. Dechene will live-tweet his reading of the draft budget summary at some point — follow him @PDcityhall for the deets.

2.GOVERNMENT PRIVATIZES250 JOBS Desperate times call for screwing over fairly-paid workers, according to the Brad Wall government. Oh well, what’s the big deal? It’s just 250 people who will order less food from local restaurants and shop less at local businesses.

4. GET IT TOGETHER, GRITS High profile Liberals tweeted links to non-partisan government job ads, which is cool. Unfortunately some of the tweets had Liberal logos. Bad. The government is not a political party.

5. OPPOSITION PARTIES WANT A PER-VOTE SUBSIDY BACK So do I. Who would you rather have pay for our democracy (and yes, it does have to be paid for): rich people and businesses or everyone who votes, equally? “It was the fairest of all the ways in which political parties received public support,” says Elizabeth May. Still think getting rid of the per-vote subsidy was one of Harper’s more evil maneuvers.

6. NEED FOR WEED An armed forces vet is worried about federal plans to cut back the amount of prescription marijuana he and others will be reimbursed for.

7. TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMPY TRUMP-TRUMP From Rob Ford’s whining to Stephen Harper’s calculated clampdowns, politicians with things to hide have been undermining the press more and more this young century. Donald Trump, who’s been bashing the media since this fiasco started, just took this nakedly self-serving strategy to a new level by having his staffers cheer him on at the first press conference he’s held in, apparently, six months. It’s ridiculous, inappropriate and dangerous. The Guardian’s Richard Wolfe says this is the beginning of a “shambolic presidency”. The Toronto Stars’ Daniel Dale, who probably thought he was done with this kind of whackjob egomaniac after Rob Ford, has a wrap-up. Best sentence: “It is not clear how well Trump’s scorched-earth transition is working for him.” Meanwhile, The Washington Post, New York Times and other news outlets are following the developing, what, scandal? Crisis? Disaster? A Globe And Mail editorial calls it “the sum of all fears”, after the Tom Clancy book that took its title from a Winston Churchill quote. Finally (because I don’t have all day to rorage for links), we don’t know how much impact Russia really had on the U.S. election, but it seems plausible and maybe likely that Clinton would’ve won if FBI director James Comey hadn’t brought up the Clinton e-mails days before the election. The Justice Department is now investigating. Commentary here.

8. OBAMACARE DEATH WATCHUgh. Republicans consistently hold the flagrantly immoral position that only Americans who can afford it should get health care. They sabotaged the Clinton health care plan in the ’90s and now they’re going to kill Obama’s health plan. Somebody better mobilize those 20 million people who could lose their insurance.

A BRILLIANT MOVIE IS AT THE RPL TONIGHT The library’s got a free screening of Jaques Tati’s Playtime, a hilarious satire brilliantly disguised as a pointless snooze-fest. There’s nothing else like it, and if you haven’t seen it you should go. It’s at 7. Don’t let the cold win!

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The former British intelligence officer who gathered the material about Mr. Trump is considered a competent and reliable operative with extensive experience in Russia, American officials said. But he passed on what he heard from Russian informants and others, and what they told him has not yet been vetted by American intelligence.

The memos describe sex videos involving prostitutes with Mr. Trump in a 2013 visit to a Moscow hotel. The videos were supposedly prepared as “kompromat,” or compromising material, with the possible goal of blackmailing Mr. Trump in the future.

The memos also suggest that Russian officials proposed various lucrative deals, essentially as disguised bribes in order to win influence over the real estate magnate.

The memos describe several purported meetings during the 2016 presidential campaign between Trump representatives and Russian officials to discuss matters of mutual interest, including the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

Those sex videos apparently contain prostitutes, who Trump supposedly hired to pee in front of him [sound of Internet exploding].

The report’s details are unverified and maybe unverifiable, un-sourced and totally sketchy so who knows if this is real. Certainly falls within the parameters of “stuff I could’ve imagined but am glad I didn’t.” I hope the Trump-haters will be appropriately skeptical, because as much as we all might enjoy the U.S. intelligence community taking down Trump, a coup is still a coup. (I can’t believe I’m writing about a possible coup this early in 2017).

Is this guy even going to make it to the swearing-in ceremony?

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Ooh! I can answer the question! Global doesn’t have anything against white people. Global ran Andrew Russell’s story about the make-up of Trump’s cabinet (which is, factually, mostly white, male, and rich, which, also factually, isn’t demographically representative of the country he was (technically) elected to lead) because it’s news.

And that homogeneous make-up is, arguably, a problem — because a room full of white, rich dudes is saddled with a narrow range of life experiences informing their public policy. They won’t have experienced racism, sexism or poverty, and as a result they’re much less likely to understand ordinary people’s real, lived experiences.

It sure as hell isn’t racist against white people, as Gormley implies.

That said: to me, if anything in Global’s tag line is conspicuous, it’s that it doesn’t mention how rich Trump’s cabinet is. But we’ll let that pass because Russell’s actual Global article sure does:

The 17 people Trump has so far selected for his cabinet or for posts with cabinet rank have a combined wealth of $9.5 billion including DeVos – whose net worth is estimated at roughly $5.1 billion, according to Forbes.

I wish John Gormley worried more about narrow-minded, self-interested business elites being handed the keys to the U.S. government by a horrible, horrible man, and less about imaginary racism against white people.

2. SYMPATHY FOR THE TRUMPERS The author of What’s The Matter With Kansas and the new Listen, Liberal says the defining quality of Trump supporters might just be how they hate free trade — which takes well-paid blue-collar jobs in North America and turns them into crap jobs in other countries. And you thought they were just a pack of ignorant, xenophobic, deranged goons.

3. THE DOOMED MILLENNIALS “It is likely to be the first time in industrialised history, save for periods of war or natural disaster, that the incomes of young adults have fallen so far when compared with the rest of society.” Yikes.

4. SNAPSHOT OF AN EX-INDUSTRY A former film industry worker puts together an anecdotal picture of a down-and-out Saskatchewan film industry, which the Brad Wall government clobbered in 2012. You can read Prairie Dog’s original coverage on the debacle here and here.

5. CLIMATE CHANGE: GOOD FOR SSSOMETHINGCanada could get more snake species! Um, some of them might be a teeny-weenie bit venomous. Big deal, you’re not gonna get bitten. Besides, although the article doesn’t mention it, timber rattlesnakesused to live in Ontario before asshole humans wiped ’em out.